Good, straightforward article on the Dubai Ports World scandal-wannabe.

I have to finish reading "A Theory of Justice" by John Rawls today. Here's the intro to it from my Mod Pol Thought text:

John Rawls, a Harvard University philosophy professor, takes the primary problem to be addressed by social and poliical philosophy to be that of justice or fairness. The difficulty is how to decide what social arrangements are just. Rawls's suggestion is that we construct a decision-making model within which we are forced to make equitable decisions. Conceiving of ourselves in 'an original position' in which a 'veil of ignorance' prevents us from knowing any particular information about ourselves while at the same time we try to make decisions which will be in our own best interest, he argues, will have the effect of forcing us to be fair to everyone. Under such conditions he argues we would make decisions on the basis of the 'maxi-min' principle drawn from game theory. This principle would lead us to choose the best-worst outcome. It is Rawls's position that use of this principle would force us to adopt a democracy within which we all have equal amounts of basic rights (voting, speech, participating in the political process, etc.) but one which would require us to distribute social and economic goods (health care, respect, housing, etc.) so that the most disadvantaged would have more of those goods than they would have under any other distribution. On this account, differences in shares in economic goods could be justified only if they enhanced the condition of everyone. Hence, Rawls regards economic goods as communal to be divided fairly and not on the basis of prior ownership, and he envisions an expansive role for government in making distributions.